Category Archives: Social Commentary

The Mess On Campus

Are we creating a generation of mentally-ill, credentialed, physically mature children?

These people will never survive in the real world.

[Update a couple minutes later]

What the Yale shame should teach us.

I spent a lot of time in Columbia over the past couple weeks.

Somehow, this seems like cheap theatrics. I suspect that if they’d had a chance at a bowl, they wouldn’t have made this threat. Amusingly, I heard this morning that the basketball team (which I’d imagine has a black player or two) wants nothing to do with it. But they still have hopes for a successful season.

[Tuesday-morning update]

The “collective guilt of white people in Missouri“:

The goal is not to establish responsibility and identify actual perpetrators. The actual goal is power: the power to make demands that will be obeyed—the power to turn the tables and reverse the power differential, putting the protesters in charge of what Allan Bloom called the “dancing bears” in the university faculty and/or administration. A central demand of protesters such as those at Missouri is almost always a university-wide process of mind-control and intimidation, with the mandatory requirement that administrators offer and faculty and students attend classes and/or workshops that describe exactly what is now required in terms of speech, thought, and behavior that the protesters deem acceptable.

In other words, the protesters want to become the official campus propagandists. Perhaps they already have done so.

Yes. And in addition to the re-education camps, they won’t be satisfied with these two scalps.

Oopsie, that was racist, I guess.

[Update a while later]

Remember this is one of the top “journalism” schools in the country:

“You need to back up if you’re with the media!” a voice in the background yelled to the journalists trying to document the protest. “You need to respect the students! Back up!”

“I am a student,” Tim Tai, a student photographer trying to cover the protest, responded.

After Tai protested that the crowd was trying to push him, several people in the crowd laughed, tried to cover the camera with their hands, and responded, “Okay, then we’ll just block you.”

“You don’t have a right to take our photos,” one of the protesters asserted, apparently unaware that he was on taxpayer-funded public property that is by law open to the press.

Later in the video, the crowd aggressively started pushing the reporter around in an attempt to get him to stop covering their behavior.

As noted, I suspect they don’t think that police has such a right to “privacy” from being photographed. Freedom for me, not for thee.

[Afternoon update]

This is a little good news. The J-School faculty is voting to withdraw the courtesy appointment of the little fascist.

My Vegan Diet

“…almost killed me“:

Her public profile hinged on her vegan identity, yet her choices were damaging her body. Often she felt so weak, she had to work on her laptop computer from bed. Taking one yoga class would leave her drained for the whole day.

Younger’s turning point came in June 2014, exactly a year after she founded her blog, when she confided in a friend about her lack of menstruation — a condition medically known as amenorrhea — for at least six months.

The pal, who had also suffered from orthorexia, recommended she introduce fish into her diet. Soon afterward, Younger forced herself to eat a small portion of wild salmon — and, within a week, her period was restored.

“It showed me how my body was dying to get back on track,” she says, adding that she instantly started to feel more energetic.

A dietician confirmed that fish and eggs would boost her poor nutrient levels. Refusing to lie to her fans, Younger announced on her blog that same month that she was “transitioning away from veganism.”

That’s when all hell broke loose. Her site crashed within two minutes and 1,000 followers instantly ditched her. Worse, she received anonymous death threats from hard-core vegans claiming she condoned the slaughter of animals and that neither she nor her family had the right to live.

Vegans can be such nice people.

Fred Thompson

Rest in peace. My condolences to Jeri and the family.

He was my top pick in 2008, and it was a disappointment that he had to drop out. The “fire in the belly” thing is one of the stupidest modern reasons to not pick a president. We shouldn’t want someone to run the country who wants the power that badly. Ideally, we’d draft someone who didn’t want the job, but was abundantly competent and would accept it out of patriotism (original example, G. Washington; much more recent one, Paul Ryan).

It’s interesting to note that if he’d been elected, and re-elected, he’d have died in office. Of course, in that alternate history, he might still be alive.

[Late-evening update]
More thoughts from Michael Ledeen.